Lodge

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"Someone's got to keep this thing locked up."
Lodge
Player: Cmiller#1001(Discord)
Origin:	Mutant
Archetype:	Brute
Security Level:	50
Server:	Confidential
Personal Data
Real Name:	Thomas Lodge (FKA Thomas Emery)
Known Aliases:	None
Species:	Human
Age:	36
Height:	6'5''
Weight:	240 pounds
Eye Color:	Blue
Hair Color:	Black
Biographical Data
Nationality:	American
Occupation:	Cape and Clinical Trial Subject
Place of Birth:	Las Vegas, Nevada
Base of Operations:	Las Vegas, Nevada
Marital Status:	Single
Known Relatives:	Amelia Emery, Sister.
Known Powers
Immune to Disease, Exceptional Physical Fortitude, Dramatically Enhanced Physicality, Strength, and Constitution, Malleable Form as a result of The Visitor
Known Abilities
Confidential
Equipment
LODGE suit Mark IV: Containment Suit
No additional information available.

Bubble Boy of Las Vegas

In the Winter of 1995, Thomas Emery is checked into the Summerlin Hospital Medical Center complaining of a skin condition and an inability to breathe. He is largely believed to be experiencing an acute instance of Anaphylactic Shock. He would surpass any traditional duration expectations after 3 weeks of the reaction without passing away. This, coupled with a rare wheal condition covering the whole of his body, quickly brought Thomas Emery into the eye of every major medical researcher in the Southwest united States. Tabloids were the first among them to break the dirty news, treating Thomas largely as a Bigfoot-esque character in a series of freak shock articles that would draw comparisons to living zombies. Then the local news outlets, interviewing the Emery family, the parents and little Amelia, all hoping for the tears that sell nightime news television. Then, the national publications who managed to remove all personhood from the boy gasping for breath in his hospital bed, grasping for life, unable to die, but unable to live. He was a number now, an oddity, whose existence sparked curiosity more than it wished his life, he was a new-age Phinneas Gage for the youth of the Southwest.

Eventually, in a strike of sympathy, the Emery parents were visited by a man in an all black suit save for white lapels, who carried a briefcase, a ring on his middle finger, and an 'Viva Las Vegas' button promptly on that white lapel that depicted the Stratosphere hotel and Casino. He talked faster than they ever thought possible of a human being, but the crux on long winded small talk was that a very concentrated amount of money that sat in piles around a board room and called themselves Lead Investors, represented a collective of likeminded medical professionals that were responsible for keeping the next breed of people alive. The Catalyst Group of Las Vegas, Nevada were offering to give Thomas back the breath in his lungs. For the simple chance to study and codify him. To Pin his wings and press him in a heavy spined book, in the hopes that one day they might look back on the specimen they made so long ago in the Mojave. So a southern boy, brought to the city of sin, is instead brought to a white frosted Opera room. He trades a Nevada sunrise for the white fluorescents of an underground facility. He trades children for nurses, and later he'll call some of them when he's drunk on the holidays, an increasingly hard thing to do for Thomas Emery, and he will ask if they too remember missing the sunshine in that place. The nurses all give the same answer, a calm, controlled, rehearsed, 'I'm glad you called, Thomas.'

Within weeks, Thomas was returned to an acceptable level of existence, and the constant fight for air in his lungs became a thing of the past. The credit goes entirely to The Catalyst Group, that lived up to its word despite its alternative methods. The price came in the form of the following years. Thomas would be home schooled and contained within a private facility, kept far and away from the dangerous air of natural life. It was discovered through experimental meta trials to diagnose his affliction, that Thomas possessed an army of white blood cells unrivaled by any other human being. This voracious, over active defense force thickening his blood acted as blessing and curse. It meant that for his life, he had never known the common cold. Never contracted a flu. Never known an infection that lasted for any longer than a few seconds. His body regenerated cells at an alarming rate, and the cycle of oxygenated blood was twice as fast as that of a regular human being. He found that for every impenetrable defense put up by his body, though, there was another false flag that caused that defense to turn its sights on itself. Every newly introduced part of his body, every minute change, was confused for an attack against his vulnerabilities, and before long his body would again be waging a slow paced suicide.

As the Catalyst Group became aware of this, knowing full well now that Thomas was one of their new breed, a heavy hitter was called in. Doctor Amon Safdi was a premier in his field for the study and diagnosis for auto-immune diseases in mutated specimen. His most awarded research project was looking into the highly intelligent apes of Cryptex's most expensive zoo, Safdi was pursuing the idea that the advanced progression of sentience in these apes caused a rapid extension of their hormone production, overproducing new hormones the apes had never experienced before. This shock to the system of new feeling, new needs, brought about an 'itch in the brain' as Safdi would later put it to Thomas, 'They just couldn't help themselves. They knew too much, but understood none of what they knew. But the body assumed they were ready, it always does. There is no accounting for a disconnect between Body and Soul when it comes to function. If your heart can't take it, the muscles don't mind, Thomas."

Thomas would routinely recant this sentiment to himself, when the loneliness set in. There were nights under fluorescents, what he assumed was night with no other evidence than the digital clock along the wall, where he would feel as though some heavy weighted cloth had been set about his neck, and that he might sink right through to the center of the earth. In those moments it would become difficult to breathe, not for the usual reasons. Not for the shock of his form turning against itself, but instead from the unimaginable expectation of living. Those breaths, ragged and cold in his lungs, always cold after the changes they made to him, would come low and slow through gritted teeth. He would stare dimly at a button left, some time ago by a visitor, 'Viva Las Vegas' with a big picture of one of the tallest man made structures in the world. He would contemplate, even at that young age, why he was chosen to be this. Why he had to be Thomas. And when the questions would become too loud in his mind, when the itch in his brain would become larger than his understanding. He would breathe out until he went blue in the face, using every ounce of air this place gave back to him. In a voice at the end of his diaphragm, rasping he would remind himself, "The Muscles Don't Mind, Thomas."

Thomas would stay in the Catalyst Group until 2003. He would become one in twelve that would make up The Catalyst Group's first Graduating Class at the High School level. His date to prom was a girl from that graduating class, she was born with a meta affliction that meant that without conscious thought she couldn't keep her form corporeal for longer than a few seconds. He loved her just the same, in the way sixteen years can love. Dimly Thomas recalls the end of the night approaching, of course his circumstance meant that they could not be in the same room, both with the others of the graduating class, and of each other. He explains through bleary eyes the remembrance of that girl on the other side of the thin, durable glass that separated the real world from Thomas' canned air. Music had been pumped in through small speakers in the corner of both his containment cell and the visitor's area. Thomas insists that it was the voice of Morrissey being pumped through the lofi accommodations, but no one on staff remembers what was played for the children then. Thomas, who had been quiet for most of the night, was just watching her from the other side. At the ten minute call, realizing that their time was nearly at an end, Thomas would place his hand against the window and wait, hoping to see the familiar materialization of what he would later remember as his very best friend of his childhood. Eventually there, out of the smoke she made out of herself in slow waves, a hand would reach out for the other side of the glass and meet his. Thomas would later insist that "Please, Please, Please.." would leak in through the radios then.

Two years later, Thomas would be declared cured of his autoimmune diseases to a hospitable level. He would be brought before the Catalyst Group and his family, and instructed that he would finally be able to act in his life without the assistance of the extensive tests and medications conducted at the Catalyst facility. Briefly in the reunion with his family, his sister Amelia would blow a bout of tears into a handkerchief made out of one of Thomas' baby blankets. Thomas keeps this scrap of fabric under a display case in his study as of today. The Catalyst Group, who by this time had expended more money into Thomas than they ever thought they would, had some immediate implications of what was expected of Thomas moving forward. Thomas was to enroll with the FBSA immediately, classifying with GIFT, and signing on with the Catalyst Group for extended monitoring, treatment, and more so, employment.

Thomas expressed an eagerness to attend the University of Nevada, Reno. He fought in multiple meetings for the merits of community outreach, of educating the school on his condition, of being able to learn at his own limit, in classes that he chose for himself. The request was promptly denied, his medication used as ransom for agreement. Thomas was Homeschooled through to an AA degree, and eventually passed the evaluations to attain such. Thomas has since been asked routinely why it stopped there, at the sound of this question, his nose hooks into a wrinkle and chews at the lower half of his face, "Sometimes it's better just to let it ride."